


Steel Evidence

by recreational



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gunplay, M/M, One Shot, Romance, Slash, Smut, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 00:41:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recreational/pseuds/recreational
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On his search for the key to John Watson’s libido, a lucky hit helps Sherlock to find the trigger at last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Curse you, CrackshotKate, for infecting me with gun porn! And praise you for facing the music when I announced that we have to write some of our own :D

_“One-four-five. About John Watson. A new test setup”_

Sherlock switched off the dictaphone. Overcoming his aversion to hearing his own voice was always a great obstacle, but the events of the previous days had been too striking and he needed to find out if he had missed an important factor. With some effort, he pressed play again.

_“Today, I remarked to John that I was surprised about the lack of porn on his laptop. He was rather scandalised by the topic, but then explained that he didn’t have any because he simply wasn’t interested in pornography as a whole. In turn, I informed him that every healthy male with a low enough IQ was interested in porn.”_

Sherlock paused. After that utterance, John had found it necessary to formulate some very pointed quips regarding the missing connection of a high IQ and the depths of life like doing the dishes or shopping for groceries. Those weren’t important enough to include in the recording though, Sherlock had decided.

_“John pointed out that I should know about the absence of porn in his life as I possibly knew each file on his laptop and the content of his wardrobe, or what’s under his mattress for that matter. He declared porn gross and in no way arousing and then left the flat in what I can only describe as a huff. This very intriguing reaction calls for further investigation and I plan to start with the first experiment tomorrow.”_

The button’s barely audible click brought the recording to a halt. Smirking to himself, Sherlock wondered if Mycroft had already seen the latest activities on his bank account. He suspected Mycroft was aware of the fact that Sherlock had one of his credit cards in his possession, never expecting him to actually use it, but this had been the perfect time to purchase something with it after all.

He had downloaded the film from the most dubious internet site possible and he was sure that the quadruple ‘X’ in the name would cause a typical scowl plus a raised eyebrow from his brother when he checked his monthly statement. Yet this was of secondary significance and automatically, Sherlock’s finger found the ‘play’ button again.

_“One-four-six. About John Watson. First test setup: heterosexual porn._

_As expected, John was bewildered when I asked him to watch a film with me, but he relented when I made him realise that he would do this with any other person. At the opening credits, though, he seemed to become increasingly alarmed and when the film started, he wanted to flee immediately. I had to stoop so low as to challenge his masculinity to keep him on the sofa and the first several minutes appeared to be somewhat tense. Then John started to comment on the unbelievable script, the wooden acting and especially the mechanical sex. Result: failure.”_

Sherlock stopped his strangely alien voice and shook his head. It had been quite entertaining to laugh at the action playing before them and the initial discomfort had made way for a pleasant evening. At the end of the film, he had felt John’s pulse which had its normal, slightly raised rate – as could be expected in a man who had passed the prime of his physical condition – and with an irritated frown John had ripped away his hand. ‘Told you’, he had said before he vanished upstairs and although this was the case, it didn’t necessarily mean that it had to be true, Sherlock mused.

_“One-four-seven. About John Watson. Second test setup: lesbian pornography._

_I will only give a short account of this experiment as it already started out as a failure and continued to be one. Confronted with a film of the before mentioned category at breakfast, John showed one of his annoying mannerisms, namely he rolled his eyes at me, only to explain that he now knew what I was doing and that it wouldn’t work. During the action on the screen, he made tea, ate his breakfast and read the newspaper, so I ended the test run early.”_

Sherlock paused to gather his wits and concentrate again, because the humiliation of that morning was still troubling him. How could he have believed that John wouldn’t find out what he was subjected to? He had immediately vowed to be more careful and had let John believe that he'd given up, but the suspicious glances directed at him the following day showed that John could smell a rat. Sherlock smiled. The man really knew him.

_“One-four-eight. About John Watson. Third test setup: gay pornography._

_When John was watching the television, I switched on the DVD player and although he blamed it on the fact that he wanted to carry on watching the news that was on, his indignation was suspicious. He accused me of being, I quote, ‘a stubborn git’, and then shouted that he would not watch the film with me. So I had to observe him from the kitchen, and although I think I saw a flicker of interest, it is impossible to say if this ran any deeper. Result: unsatisfactory.”_

Sherlock threw the voice recorder on the bed and sighed. At that point he had nearly given up, and only his unrelenting scientific interest had forced him to go on. Obviously John either wasn’t interested in the act as such or his tastes deviated so much from what was perceived normal that finding out about them would probably make the man too ashamed to keep living with him. But he owed it to science to find out, and maybe to John as well, as the strange reluctance to let himself be touched or engage in a conversation about sex might point to serious troubles in that area. Not that Sherlock thought he could help him if that really was the case, but maybe he could drop John’s therapist a hint. Before he had been able to go on with the experiments, though, he'd had to wait for another day for the film material to arrive.

_“One-four-nine. About John Watson. Fourth test setup: variation.”_

_John almost looked as if he had resigned himself to the fact that he was supposed to watch different kinds of pornography on select nights, so he immediately joined me when I put a DVD into the player. Yet it is safe to say that the choice of sexual activities presented in the films didn’t meet his approval.”_

Sherlock grunted. That was a gross understatement.

_“Even though John conceded that strangulation somehow fit his profile, as well as sadomasochism, he declined to watch the films on the grounds of PTSD. Luckily, he asked me why I wasted so much money on the material and my account of Mycroft’s generous help lightened up his mood considerably. Therefore he didn’t catch all of the opening credits of the next film and didn’t panic immediately, but when he asked me if it was filmed in France, I had to admit that the term ‘Champagne’ was most likely a synonym for a so-called golden shower. Result: complete failure.”_

There had been another film which had not managed to make it past the first few scenes and so became a candidate for an outtake. The title was inconspicuous enough but when John wanted to know if the goat functioned as a prop, Sherlock had to answer in the negative. As a consequence, John wasn't seen until the following evening – a reason to really give up trying to solve the mystery of what excited John Watson’s libido because twenty-four hours without John were bordering torture. In the desperation to alleviate boredom, a trusty relief had come into play.

_“One-fifty. About John Watson. Chance observations._

_After I had just unsuccessfully tried to hit one of the already existing bullet holes in the wall, I contemplated my failure on the sofa when John entered. He threw me a rather long glance and the fact that he hadn’t directly looked at me at all lately made this an astounding event. I pretended not to have seen it and when John disappeared upstairs, I deduced the only difference to my normal posture. Result: the gun.”_

Satisfied, Sherlock switched off the dictaphone and returned it to the drawer of his bedside table. He hadn’t missed anything, so now it was time for a detailed enquiry.


	2. Steel Evidence

Letting the tunnels drift by with unfocused eyes, John slumped down lower into the uncomfortable seat of the tube. After a night of hiding at Harry’s and a day at the hospital, he had decided to face the inevitable and return to Baker Street, but going by the fingernails cutting into his flesh, this wasn't a brilliant move.

With some effort, he unclenched his fists and inhaled deeply. God, hopefully Sherlock would stop his stupid porn testing already, yet there was no telling if he was prepared to give up at all once he’d started. The goat had been horrible enough and John loathed imagining to what extremes Sherlock would go to satisfy his curiosity.

He sighed and tried to ignore the reflection of his miserable face in the window. It was impossible to explain why nothing really aroused him and over the years, he had become used to his relationships failing on a regular basis. Looking back, he had to concede that already in the army, his reputation had been reduced to being an acceptable one-night stand, someone who hooked up as quickly as he lost interest.

Harry often joked that there was barely anyone with a greater choice in possible partners, yet John suspected that his preferences, or rather the lack of them, made the problem even worse in the end. He had actually entertained the notion that he was somehow psychologically traumatised or maybe bordering asexual – until he met Sherlock. From the first moment on he'd been in a constant state of more or less subtle arousal that provided an annoying background humming to everything he did, and if it continued on, he’d end up with high blood pressure one day for sure.

Listlessly, he dragged himself upstairs to the flat. He simply didn’t have the energy to maintain the carefully fortified wall of detachment, dog-tired as he was. If he was lucky, Sherlock would be out, roaming the London underworld for another chapter of repulsive pornography, and he could sneak into his bed undisturbed.

For a split second, he was under the illusion that this was indeed the case until his eyes strayed to the sofa. There he was, in his usual thinker pose, so everything was in order, wasn’t it? _Wasn’t it?_ Not every part of John’s body immediately registered the warning signals his mind sent out, blaring that absolutely nothing was in order. Instinctively, John pushed the door to make it snap shut, and then even his lower brain functions were switched off.

In turn Sherlock didn't acknowledge his entrance but was staring straight at the opposite wall, his head resting on the top of John’s gun, chin against the back sight. The grip was lazily clutched between both hands and John knew that he should say something about the proper handling of weapons, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t even sure that a sound would come out of his mouth if he tried.

It felt as if he'd remained like that for hours and John sincerely hoped that this wasn’t the case. Just indistinctly, he perceived his ability to move again after some time, and only when he heard the door to his room click shut behind him, his mind agreed to process reality.

What had that been about?

It must have had something to do with the constant confrontation with pornography lately, John mused. If Sherlock carried things too far, there wouldn’t be a way to look at something as inconspicuous as a courgette any more without having improper thoughts.

“Wonderful,” John grunted. This was the perfect way to make living with Sherlock even more of a challenge and dejected, he decided to go to bed immediately. A good night’s sleep would help him to fortify his façade again, erasing the vivid images that tugged so forcefully at his defences.

In the morning, he really felt refreshed and repeatedly told himself that a quiet weekend was waiting for him. He showered and dressed, habitually ignoring the stirring in his groin he had become so accustomed to. No matter what his tired out brain from the day before had thought, nothing would make him lose his composure.

Going downstairs, he detected a faint smell hanging in the air. He had already noticed it on his way to the bathroom, but it was continually getting stronger in the living room. Two steps ahead and John mentally kicked himself for not recognising it earlier: he knew that smell although he had been confronted with it at rather irregular intervals lately.

But why was Sherlock using his solvent? Suspiciously, John peeked into the kitchen and the table was indeed cluttered with the parts of a gun – his gun. Declaring this the amount of detail he planned to take in, John nevertheless couldn’t prevent the immobility of the night before paralysing him again. _Whatever you do,_ his mind commanded _, don't look up!_

“Why –?” John asked, training his eyes on the table and avoiding any glance at the man sitting at it.

“I used it, so I'm cleaning it,” was the answer. It had sounded as if Sherlock had been speaking to the items in front of him and John saw the movements of the man's hands continuing without any interruption, one of them clutching the barrel, the other cleaning it with a piece of cloth on a rod, pumping through it until the cloth no longer showed traces of residue.

Worried by his own palms getting sweaty, John hoped that Sherlock had already cleaned the other parts of the pistol, but when he took the brush and loosened the carbon build-up on the outside of the barrel, John suspected that this wasn’t the case. His increasing heart rate told him where all this would end, though: in the utter humiliation of John Watson. His only chance was for Sherlock to make a mistake, perhaps then he could break the spell that was rooting him to the spot, eyes fixed on those nimble fingers.

For longer than was strictly necessary, they pushed the barrel through the cloth clenched in a tight fist to mop up the dirt that had come loose, and John heard his teeth grinding when the hands let go of the barrel at last and took the slide. A few drops of the solution, then it was the brush again and of course Sherlock did everything breach face pointing down. _Perfectly accurate,_ John swore in his head.

In the following, the slender fingers paid attention to the slide rails, mopping them carefully with a cloth, each nook and cranny polished with a cotton wool bud, and after they had treated the frame in the same way, John was slowly getting used to the pale digits on his weapon. Not entirely, but at least to the degree that he didn’t constantly feel the urge to shove Sherlock off his chair and fuck him on the tiles, that is.

Yet his relief was short-lived because Sherlock grabbed the spring guide and started that damnable rubbing again. _Bloody hell, why does he have to be so fucking thorough?_ John’s pulse started a rapid jig when he saw Sherlock inserting the guide in the spring, placing it on the table to take the frame once more.

A skilful finger then dipped into a drop of the solution and started to lubricate all the points necessary. As if it was forming a complicated porcelain statue, it applied a touch here and rubbed a bit there, tiny caresses paying attention to every detail. Almost dazed by the dance of the fingertip, John was violently ripped from his reverie when all of a sudden, both hands became active again, making the barrel and the spring assembly disappear in the slide with lightning speed, the frame clicking into place a fraction of a second later.

Carefully, Sherlock checked that there was no magazine inside before brushing over the weapon with his thumb in a casual touch. John drew in a ragged breath, feeling his control slipping away. _He’s is just assembling your gun,_ he chided himself, _there’s no need to add yet another aspect to_ _the already gigantic stack of unwitting_ _charms you see in the man!_  

John braced himself, adopting his most neutral demeanour, and forced his eyes not to get caught by the unbearably flimsy combination of pyjamas and dressing gown on their way up. But the moment they met Sherlock’s, he knew that there was no need to hide anything anyway. _Shit._

“We've found a suitable stimulant, it seems,” Sherlock smirked. “Interesting. Your mind connecting a weapon with sex. Fits the profile after all.”

“I'm not a psychopath!" John bristled, his consternation making his flatmate's face light up even more.

“No, you’re a perfectly normal male,” he leered. “I think we've established that by now.”

“And you’re an arsehole.”

It seemed that nothing could wipe the satisfied grin off Sherlock’s face. The purposeful trip to the living room to retrieve his laptop made John even more nervous and when Sherlock waved him nearer, one glance at the term in the search bar was enough.

“Damn it, Sherlock. You’re not going to order gun porn,” he shouted and retreated to the door frame again.

“But it would be a waste not to explore this aspect of your sexuality, now that we’ve discovered it," Sherlock stated.

“Are you kidding –?"

“I’m just trying to be helpful," Sherlock interrupted him indignantly and John heaved a sigh.

“Shit, Sherlock, this isn’t helpful at all.”

“It isn’t?” He shut the laptop and threw John a questioning look. “I thought it’s detrimental to your health to suppress your needs.”

“Are you lecturing me about sex? You?” John asked incredulously.

“It’s obviously indicated,” Sherlock explained patiently and John felt anger bubbling up. Warily, he saw Sherlock grabbing the gun, getting up and advancing towards him. “You're taking all of this too seriously, John. Sex is… it’s a bit of exercise. And this here is just a prop, a means to achieve an end," Sherlock said before he stopped right in front of John. Like some solid evidence in a murder case, he held up the gun, turning it with hypnotising regularity.

"If this was some form of artificial male genitalia, you would directly accept the notion, but because it’s a gun, it can’t serve the same purpose?"

"Erm… but…" John stuttered, completely at a loss how to respond to the topic. Sherlock just shrugged and marched towards the sofa to sit down. He leaned back and smirked suggestively, making it impossible for John to form a coherent thought, but John's mind went completely blank when Sherlock opened his mouth to lick his lips. Mesmerised, he observed the tip moistening their puffy middle and then retreat again.

In the meanwhile, something else was going on, John was almost sure of that, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the slight sheen the tongue had left. _Blink, now!_ John ordered himself although it was already becoming blatantly obvious that he had missed a crucial development when the gun appeared in his line of vision. Agonisingly slow but in a completely carefree movement, Sherlock guided it to his mouth, let the muzzle slide between his lips and imitated a slight sucking motion before he let it slip out again.

“We saw something similar in the first film, didn't we?” he asked and paused, obviously to check for the aftertaste in his mouth. "It's an advantage that you exchanged your old solvent for a natural one, by the way. A bit lemonlike."

"Sherlock…" Torn between advising him about the health hazards of natural solvents, begging him to stop with the porn show, and shouting at him to go on, John remained silent, too stunned to handle the conflicting orders struggling in his head.

"This is becoming uncomfortable. Warm above all," Sherlock said and unbuttoned his pyjama top, revealing too much pale skin for John's liking, or too little, he really couldn't say which one it was.

“Don't...” he began because that word appeared to fit all of his purposes, but Sherlock seemed to be somewhat lost in thought and just continued.

“Well, what else did they do?” he wondered. “Ah, yes, I'm supposed to present to my audience with what they can expect,” he said and reached under his waistband.

 _No, no, not that!_ John shouted inwardly. He felt his legs buckle even before Sherlock got out his penis and started pumping it. _These are mind games, nothing else,_ John tried to calm himself down, and with brutal perseverance, he held Sherlock’s gaze when he turned to look at him.

"The central stimulant is missing though," Sherlock declared and grabbed the pistol again. With both hands he clutched it together with his cock, gently rubbing flesh along metal, and after drawing in a surprised breath, he let his head drop on the backrest.

"It's... a bit hard but it doesn't really chafe, it's rather... " A deep groan interrupted the sentence and John was sure that he was witnessing Sherlock Holmes letting go right now, and by God, no one could seriously expect him to resist that. So what the fuck was Sherlock trying to prove? And how could he play him so mercilessly?

"I give up, okay?" he whispered. "This is cruel."

"That’s not acceptable," Sherlock rasped to John's relief and let go of his cock. "We should move this somewhere else."

"What? No!" John ground out, but Sherlock stood up and stepped out of his trousers, immediately advancing towards his bedroom. At the doorway he turned around and when he saw that John still hadn't moved, he leaned against the doorframe, erection jutting like a silent invitation. Before John had a chance to process this image, though, Sherlock lifted his hand and as if he was trying a delicacy, he licked along the barrel of the pistol with appreciative relish.

Reaching the tip, he raised an eyebrow. “Are you coming?”

John briefly considered slumping to the ground, opening his fly and bringing himself off in what he expected would be seconds, but his feet had a different idea. They carried him to the bedroom so that upon entering, he was able to see Sherlock all but tearing his last remaining clothes from his body. He threw the rest of his pyjamas and the dressing gown on the floor, clutching John by the shirt the second he became aware of him, and unresistingly, John let himself be pulled to the bed.

“You decide what you do with it,” Sherlock whispered and dropped the gun on the mattress. “For me the only thing that counts is that you fuck me.”

Although John was still unable to make head nor tail of what was going on, the desire he heard in the hoarse voice was enough to force him to continue. Besides, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to hold back at that point, especially not when Sherlock pressed the items he quickly fetched from the bedside table into his hand.

“Now.” The urgency in the voice had closely resembled an order. John toyed with the idea to undress but discarded the notion when Sherlock knelt on the bed on all fours, waiting for him. Almost ripping open his trousers, John freed his rock hard cock and rolled over the condom. He squeezed lube on his right hand and fingers, trying to concentrate on his task afterwards: preparing the muscles for the imminent intrusion, penetrating the tight heat, searching for the spot that would elicit the occasional moan from Sherlock.

John clenched his teeth. He knew why he had coated his right hand – he needed his left one for something else, and the moment he thought it, he was already reaching out to take the pistol. The metal felt so good in his hand, so perfect – like the body under him – and unthinkingly, he let the barrel glide down Sherlock’s lower back.

“Tell me what to do,” Sherlock breathed.

“Spread your legs wider.” Trance-like, John guided the gun through crack and over the entrance. What he wouldn’t give for a weapon without a front sight, he thought. Just a slight forward push…

He saw Sherlock trembling when the barrel rubbed along his puckered hole, arching into the pressure, and the mere sight almost forced John over the edge. He hectically coated his hardness with the rest of the lube in his hand and pushed into the channel, desperate to feel his cock where his pistol couldn’t advance.

“God, Sherlock, I need to…” But his feverish thrusts were welcomed by an eager backwards movement of Sherlock’s arse and John just woke up from the automatic snapping of his hips when he wanted to steady himself. It was clear that he couldn’t hold on properly: he hadn’t let go of the pistol. On the contrary, it had left an imprint, the levers and the grip panels creating a red pattern on Sherlock's pale skin.

John stared at the gun, trying to comprehend the electrifying rush of power that accompanied the sight of it. Continuing to rock Sherlock with measured thrusts, he experimentally let the barrel trail down the man's back, journeying over the bumps of his spine and sliding on the film of sweat covering it.

“Touch yourself,” John heard his own voice say and added just a hint of pressure on the shoulder blade. _This is so wrong,_ the mantra in the back of his head repeated when he saw the tissue yielding, metal boring into it, but simultaneously Sherlock obeyed and reached under himself. Frantically, he pushed into the barrel and against John to get more contact, forcing him to sink in to the hilt.

“John…” Sherlock moaned and shuddered, his climax increasing the heat around John's cock exponentially, setting off a programmed need in John to get more of it, much more, until he felt as if he had to black out, only the warm metal in his hand grounding him. It would leave another impression of the gun on the skin, both his and Sherlock's, an imprint of the weapon Sherlock had licked, the tongue inspecting the slide like it would examine a cock, Sherlock swallowing the barrel as if his lips enclosed John’s manhood...

The image yanked John's command over the raging fire in his groin away from him, focusing him on the velvety friction of that tight channel instead. It sent jolt after jolt of pure pleasure through his body, but he couldn’t let it end, he had to continue the strokes until his vision became blurry and his cock already started going limp.

“Damn, Sherlock…” he panted and paused a moment before his strength faded completely and he collapsed on the bed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a small smile and then his flatmate got up to disappear from the room, the sound of the shower indicating his whereabouts seconds later. Groggily, John tried to gather his wits to pull off the condom. Rummaging around in the bedside table, he clumsily felt for a tissue but instead hit something hard.

 _“... the gun. One-five-one. About John Watson. Test setup gun cleaning,”_ it sounded from the drawer and John’s blood ran cold.


	3. Epilogue

When the shower gel slipped from his hands and clattered into the bathtub, Sherlock gave a start and his mind agreed to connect to reality again. Until then, he had just been going through the motions of adjusting the right temperature and frothing up the gel in his hands because what had happened had simply been too momentous.

Sherlock closed his eyes and let the spray of the shower wash over his shoulders. _Finally! After all that time!_ If he concentrated, he could still feel him. The slight burning of his rectum, a hint of how it was to be filled by John's length, the barrel of the gun pressing into his back… Sherlock took his cock in a soapy hand and enjoyed the light stirring that was starting to spread in his groin again.

Never would he have anticipated the gun to be the trigger. What irony! But how could he have failed to notice it before? Hopefully he hadn't overlooked anything else, especially if it had the potential of bringing this promising beginning to an abrupt end.

Quickly he lathered down. One thing was clear: Whatever he did from now on, he needed to avoid scaring John off at all costs. So that meant hurrying back and making sure that John saw the last development in their relationship in the same way he did and didn't jump to the kind of false conclusions an unscientific mind was prone to.

The moment he entered the bedroom, though, a distinct panic took hold of him, slowing down his movements and narrowing his vision. John wasn’t there. Perhaps the wrong path had already been taken, and if that was the case, John wouldn’t be in his room, waiting for him. No, he would be on neutral territory.

Sherlock swallowed against the bitterness that was starting to choke him. Overcoming the resistance of his body, he shuffled to the living room and just as expected, John sat in his chair. His clothes were straightened, his posture rigid and forbidding, and especially his hand almost seemed to cramp, as tight as it was holding on to something. The item had to be too big to close his hand completely, too hard to give way to the pressure and the fact that the drawer of the bedside table had been closed supported only one conclusion: the dictaphone.

“That’s it? Some exercise? Or worse: an experiment?” John asked quietly, eyes still trained on his fist.

Sherlock could barely deal with the subdued voice or the following uncomfortable stretch of silence, but it was the accusing gaze directed at him that almost took his breath away. _Run, flee! Leave the flat for good and escape any emotional entanglement,_ his mind screamed, but he found he couldn’t move. It had simply been going on for too long, all the secret longing, the insecurity, it had worn him out to the degree that giving up suddenly seemed like such a tempting solution.

Before he could have any second thoughts, he went to his room and retrieved the storage medium from his wardrobe. When he stood in front of John and extended his hand, he felt almost naked in his dressing gown, John’s hesitation to take the memory stick freezing the humiliating scene until all Sherlock could sense was the dread gnawing at him.

At long last, John stood up and snatched the stick from the palm of Sherlock’s hand. He passed him without looking up and went into the kitchen to open his laptop and let it read the files. Sherlock cringed when his voice started to sound from the computer's poor loudspeakers.

_“One. About John Watson._

_A couple of hours ago, I was introduced to a potential flatmate and going by recent failures in the area, I shouldn’t get my hopes up. In case it pans out differently, though, I named this recording the first in a series but if John Watson changes his mind, this will also be the last. It only seemed important to create some kind of memento in the unlikely event that his brief presence in my life will get deleted from my mind one day.”_

John stopped only to frown before pressing play again.

_“Two. About John Watson._

_I had a strange conversation with John and I’m convinced that my attempts at hiding my rapidly increasing attachment to him behind a general rejection of relationships has led to misunderstandings.”_

John's genuinely amused snort accompanied the utterance.

_“But it didn’t change anything in his behaviour. In fact, he saved my life afterwards and risked ending up behind bars. I have to admit that during the following night, I repeatedly found myself in front of his door with the firm resolution of declaring myself.”_

Sherlock couldn’t make anything of the fact that John was shaking his head now. Was he angered? He slid over the touchpad to start another file.

_“Fifteen. About John Watson._

_My attempt to adapt my sleeping cycle to John’s has finally worked out.”_

“Seriously?” John asked the screen and then chose a different file.

_“Seventy-four. About John Watson. A woman._

_In my desperation to be close to John, I subjected him to a memory activation technique, though I could very well imagine that he had used his mobile.”_

A distant breathing indicated that the recording was not yet finished.

_“Furthermore he has decided to go out with one of his colleagues. Fortunately there’s the case at hand to distract me.”_

John threw Sherlock a critical look. Perhaps he was asking himself the same question Sherlock had pondered about dozens of times. Was it possible that he had put her in so much danger on purpose? Yet if John thought the same, it didn’t seem to matter in the end because he went down the list and then started a new file.

_“One-two-one. About John Watson. Spontaneous reaction._

_I arranged for John to run into me in the bathroom. The fact that I was naked made him nervous but otherwise didn’t affect him, though I can’t be sure as quickly as he disappeared again.”_

The twitching lips could have been the beginning of a smile.

_“One-three-three. About John Watson. Strategical notes._

_I still haven’t found an approach to clearly determine John’s interests and his emotional state. I sometimes consider talking to him, but risking a clumsy failure like at the beginning is too dangerous, so I’d better refrain from direct confrontation.”_

Hand resting on the table, John didn’t start another sound file but stared at the screen with an empty look. He knitted his brows, apparently processing the information he had just received yet without directly coming to a conclusion. Sherlock was still mentally counting the seconds John remained closed-off and immobile, when without a warning he suddenly jumped up. Determination on his face, John marched towards Sherlock, who took an involuntary step backwards, his bewilderment warring with the readiness to defend himself – until John’s lips collided with his.

Hands clutched his collar and the hard impact of John’s body made Sherlock stumble backwards, slipping on a small pile of journals and losing his balance. He cushioned the inevitable fall by partly landing on the sofa before slumping down on the carpet, but John seemed to be completely unperturbed by their new position.

“I'm such an idiot,” he ground out and let his lips linger on Sherlock’s. “Fuck, _you're_ an idiot.”

 _I really must have overlooked something crucial,_ flitted through Sherlock's mind, but then it preferred to give in to the grinding of hips and the addictive onslaught of John’s mouth which opened to suck in his lower lip. Tentatively, a slippery muscle joined the movement of the mouth, feeling for contours and then snaking further to go on a search for Sherlock’s tongue and entwine with it in a seductive dance. Greedily he let his hands roam over John's back and shoulders and combed through cropped hair. Touch! He needed to get hold of some skin at once! Peripherally he realised that the sides of his dressing gown had slid down to the floor, his cock quickly filling with blood despite the chafing jeans that rubbed against it. Those superfluous clothes!

“I don't want to repeat myself, but this is rather uncomfortable,” Sherlock managed to say during a brief pause to draw in some much needed air.

“We definitely have to move this somewhere else. But one day,” John panted, “I want to listen to the rest of your recordings.”

“John –”

“There's so much I've missed,” he pleaded and Sherlock couldn't suppress a smirk.

“Absolutely not,” he answered curtly.

“Why? Is there...?” John's voice died away when Sherlock pulled him down and trailed along the shell of his ear with his tongue.

“Under no circumstance will I ever make myself that vulnerable again,” Sherlock growled. “But you know,” he whispered and chuckled lightly, “you could always force me at gunpoint.”

 

The End


End file.
